Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1890 — Protection Cheapens Prices. [ARTICLE]

Protection Cheapens Prices.

Protection to domestic industries does not necessarily mean higher prices for products, as the attorneys for free trade would have us believe. Its more important function is to insure a market for what is made, at a minimum by domestic competition. ' For illustration: Here is a com- • pany willing to put capital into a woolen mill, and to give steady employ men t to hundreds of hands, and to be content with a small profit, if given assurance of a market for its goods. But if, after purchasing a stock of wool from ■ neighboring farmers, and paying out.thousands of dollars for labor, taxes, insurance, etc., the goods have been sold in competition with those of foreigners, who have paid less for wages, and nothing toward the support of government, schools etc-, the result will be that home- ■ imide fabrics will disappear from i our markets. And they will not i reappear until the prices of wages • ami material required are low | viiough in warrant ! competitioiLWith the cheaper made . I goods t>f ioreigners. Thus it is that Protection gives ’ tbat assurance of a market without, which lib prudent man will underI take to manufacture anything at I . all. This certainty enables him ’ to give Wf'i’k to men who, without it, would be forced into some other calling, if not compelled to remain idle. Ihe larger the number of enterprises promising profit, the i larger the number of competitors will be found among capitalists, the niore of these, the greater the demand for workmen, the larger i ihe proportion of profits given for : wages, and the lower the price, to consumers. [— Theorists all the way from Cob-* aden tmGlevel'and Ji ave contended i that the cost of all products was ; enhanced by the amount of tariff laid vn the portion sent hither by foreigners, but against such blind i content in there stands the assurance ot market quotations that, in every branch of protected industries, prices to consumers are now lower, and wages to employes are ; now higher, than when the nation- ' al policy compelled dependence ! upon foreign sources for the larger proportion of manufactured articles used by our people.